Parrot Shows Off Two New Toy Drones, the Jumping Sumo and the MiniDrone, at CES Unveiled

Most Read

LAS VEGAS—Parrot is probably best known for its AR Drone Quadcopter, but since then the company has come out with a couple of other offbeat inventions, including the plant-monitoring gadget called Flower Power last CES 2013, and its Zik line of headphones. This year, the company is getting back to its roots and coming out with a couple of new toy drones: the MiniDrone and the Jumping Sumo.

In a fairly large suite right off the spacious room where CES Unveiled was slated to be held, Parrot's team gave me a sneak peek of the two toys. First they showed me the "robot-insect" christened the Jumping Sumo, which connects to your phone or laptop via Wi-Fi, and uses two big wheels to roll around. The Jumping Sumo is stuffed with an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and also includes an embedded QVGA camera, so the drone's view can be streamed to your device and you have the option to record the footage. Controls are as intuitive as its earlier-released AR Drones. Simply tilt your device left or right to move it around, and flick the surface of the screen to change directions. The toy's response was snappy: It could do 180-degree turns and other tricks like spinning—even a slalom move. Its range was also quite impressive. A company representative demonstrated it zooming down one of Mandalay Bay's long halls alongside a man walking (it was speedy enough to keep up with his stride), then got it to turn and come back to us without losing the Wi-Fi link. Of course, as its name suggests, it can also jump; it can even hop onto tables, the representative told me—up to 80 cm—except the carpeted hotel floors made it impossible to show off the full capabilities.

The MiniDrone, on the other hand, is a kind of diminutive Parrot quadcopter—small enough to hold in one hand—that buzzed loudly as it flew around the room. It was extraordinarily stable during the demo, something Parrot said it had worked hard to accomplish during development. The best part of the demo was when a company rep whipped out a plastic attachment that could mount onto the MiniDrone. It looked like two thin rubberized wheels held together by a shaft in between, and once it was attached to the drone, the toy could scale the walls and even roll around on the ceiling. The MiniDrone connects to your tablet or phone via Bluetooth Low Energy.

Parrot says both toys will be available sometime in 2014, and it has yet to determine the pricing.